Realme X3 SuperZoom Unboxing, Quick Review: Is This The Budget Flagship You’ve Been Waiting For?

Realme X3 SuperZoom Unboxing, Quick Review: Is This The Budget Flagship You’ve Been Waiting For?

After weeks of teasing, Realme’s first proper flagship, the X3 SuperZoom, has finally arrived in the Unbox testing labs. The Realme X3 SuperZoom is the company’s latest flagship phone, and while the company isn’t positioning it as a “flagship killer”, one can argue that it fills that niche now that OnePlus is officially done slaying flagships.

Realme’s leaning heavily on the zoom capabilities of the X3 SuperZoom to draw in prospective buyers, but there’s plenty of other things to like in their newest flagship too.

Packaging and contents

Despite being the brand’s most premium device, the Realme X3 SuperZoom still ships in the company’s trademark bright yellow box, with the phone’s name printed proudly in front.

Inside the box is the phone, a fast charger, USB Type-C cable, silicone case, and a SIM ejector, all standard Realme fare.

Come for the zoom, stay for everything else

With all the gradient finishes on phones lately, Realme took a real risk equipping their phone with a matte, Arctic White finish.

While not immediately eye-catching, the matte finish grows on you the longer you use the phone. Not having to wipe off fingerprints and smudges when using the phone without the protective silicone case felt oddly liberating, though you probably want to keep that case on so the glass back doesn’t get scratched with daily use.

The phone has curved edges but it’s not as pronounced as the ones in other flagship phones like Xiaomi’s Mi 10, for example. The corners are rounded as well for better ergonomics Of course, there are some trade-offs in the design of the phone to keep its price low compared to its competitors. The frame is made out of plastic, not metal like aluminum.

The phone still uses a physical fingerprint scanner embedded in the power button instead of an in-display one that is standard on most flagships today.

Despite that, the overall build and construction of the phone are on par with other, far more expensive flagships.

Like most flagships, the Realme X3 SuperZoom has a large, 6.6-inch display on the front, but unlike most other flagships that use AMOLED panels for their screens, the Realme X3 SuperZoom uses an IPS LCD panel instead. Interestingly the panel has a fast, 120Hz refresh rate despite using LCD technology, tech that only Realme has used so far this year.

The Realme X3 SuperZoom uses a pill-shaped, dual selfie camera tucked in the upper left side of the display. There’s a 32-megapixel f/2.5 wide-camera in that pill-shaped cavity, as well as an 8-megapixel ultra-wide camera as well.

But the magic and the allure of the Realme X3 SuperZoom lies in the quad-camera arrangement nestled on the back.

The main shooter is a 64-megapixel sensor with an f/1.8 aperture lens, PDAF, and a 1/1.72″ sensor size.

There’s also an 8-megapixel ultra-wide angle lens thrown in there, as well as a 2-megapixel macro camera.

But the real star of the show is the 8-megapixel 5x telephoto shooter, armed with an f/3.4 aperture lens, PDAF, and OIS.

The telephoto camera that’s in the Realme X3 SuperZoom uses a periscope arrangement similar to what Huawei used on their P30 and P40 series of phones.

This allows the Realme X3 SuperZoom to shoot up to 5x optical zoom images. AI and additional software trickery allow you to push out to 10x “hybrid zoom”.

Realme’s also touting the low-light capabilities of their newest flagship, as well as the new “Starry Mode” that’s made to take photos of stars at night, albeit with the help of a tripod.

You can push the zoom up to 50x, but at that point, you’re using digital zoom. That insane amount of zoom is pretty cool to check out at first, but you’ll probably stick with the normal 5x zoom capabilities for shots if we’re being honest here.

The Realme X3 SuperZoom uses a flagship processor, unfortunately, the chipset is from 2019, not 2020. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855+ was the processor of choice for many flagships in the latter part of 2019 and is the chipset that powers Realme’s newest flagship.

Many may not like the fact that the Realme X3 SuperZoom ships with last year’s flagship processor, and while Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 865 does bring better performance to the table, the Snapdragon 855+ is no slouch either. It’s still an incredibly powerful processor on its own right and is still relatively power-efficient considering its age. While it’s a little behind when it comes to synthetic benchmark tests compared to its newest brother, I guarantee you wouldn’t even notice the difference, at least when it comes to day-to-day use.

The phone runs on Realme UI, based on Android 10. Realme’s continue to be one of the few manufacturers that actually makes a UI overlay that isn’t a pain to use, and that continues to be the case with the Realme X3 SuperZoom.

As far as the battery goes, the Realme X3 SuperZoom has a large, 4200mAh cell inside its body, which is paired with 30W fast charging capability. Realme says that the phone’s charger can top up the battery in a little under an hour from 0%.

The Realme X3 SuperZoom has great potential to be an excellent flagship alternative when it’s officially launched in the Philippines, though the price will still be a factor here. While Realme hasn’t officially announced pricing for the phone, it retails for around INR 27,999 (around Php 18K) for the 8GB/128GB variant and INR 32,999 (Php 21.7K) for the top-tier 12GB/256GB variant. Take note though that this is Indian pricing for the phone – local pricing will be a little higher thanks to how our taxes work, so don’t be surprised if the phone is a tad more expensive here than India.

Realme X3 SuperZoom Specs

  • CPUQualcomm Snapdragon 855+ octa-core processor
  • RAM8GB/12GB LPDDR4X
  • Storage128GB/256GB UFS 3.0
  • Display6.57-inch Full HD+ IPS display, 120Hz refresh rate
  • CameraQuad rear cameras: 64-megapixel f/1.8 Samsung ISOCELL GW1 main camera; 8-megapixel f/2.3 ultra-wide-angle camera; 8-megapixel f/3.4 periscope camera with 5x optical zoom and 60x hybrid zoom; 2-megapixel f/2.4 portrait camera; with LED flash, Dual Pixel Autofocus, EIS, Chroma Boost, 960FPS slow-motion video, Speed Shot, Nightscape 2.0, and 4K video recording
  • OSAndroid 10 with RealmeOS
  • Battery4200 mAh
  • FeatureFingerprint scanner, AI Face Unlock, Stereo speakers, Dolby Atmos, vapor chamber cooling
  • Front CameraDual front cameras: 32-megapixel f/2.5 IMX616 main camera, 8-megapixel f/2.4 ultra-wide-angle camera; Nightscape 2.0
  • CommunicationWiFi, Bluetooth, Dual-band GPS, A-GPS, NFC

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